|
|
Some School Districts Addressing Teen Sleep Deficit
Later Starting Times Help Students Catch Up
By Joyce Frieden
WebMD Medical NewsReviewed by Dr. Michael W. Smith
Aug. 21, 2000 -- Think you're sleep-deprived? Consider the schedule of this typical 14-year-old:
He rises at 6 a.m. to go running. Then he dresses, eats breakfast, and arrives at high school in time for his first class at 7:40. After school, there are piano lessons and homework, in addition to Boy Scouts and other activities. He usually falls asleep by 10 or 11 p.m. -- and must fight the temptation to doze throughout his morning classes the next day.
But wait, you say. He's managing nearly eight hours a night -- an amount some working parents would kill for. What's wrong with that?
Plenty, according to sleep experts. Not only do many teens keep busy schedules, but biological changes in their bodies mean that they need more sleep than ever -- nine to 10 hours per night, for most -- and that they are naturally inclined to go to bed later. The problem is so serious that a few high schools across the country have begun starting classes later in the day.
"This is a much bigger problem than people think," says Richard D. Simon, Jr., MD, medical director of the Kathryn Severyns Dement Sleep Disorder Center in Walla Walla, Wash. "They underestimate the problems of being sleepy in the daytime and how it impairs mood and affects performance."
Sleep deprivation can even be fatal. Some 55% of all car crashes in which drivers fell asleep involve people under age 26, according to the National Institutes of Health's National Center on Sleep Disorders Research in Bethesda, Md.
In a report issued earlier this year, the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) in Washington says that the total average sleep time during the school week decreases from 7 hours and 42 minutes for 13-year-olds to 7 hours and 4 minutes for 19-year-olds. At the same time, teens' needs for sleep actually increase.
Studies show that while fifth and sixth graders can be wide awake all day after about nine hours' sleep, teenagers need 10 hours to be alert all day long, says Simon. "The average teenager gets about six hours' sleep, so he's sleep-depriving himself completely," he says. Other researchers put the necessary amount of sleep for teens at about 9 hours and 15 minutes a night.
In addition, high-school-age children appear to undergo a shift in their biological 'body clock,' which tells them when to rise and go to bed, he says: "There's some evidence that teenagers' biological clock may be programmed to start turning off later at night and turn on later in morning." According to the National Sleep Foundation report, studies have shown that the typical high school student's natural bedtime is 11 p.m. or later.
Teenagers' sleep problems are aggravated by the schedules they keep, says Simon. "In high school, socialization starts, and parents start allowing children to go to football games and go out afterward, and then they let them sleep in on Saturday mornings." On Saturdays, the children will wake up at 10 a.m. and go outside, and the natural light reinforces the message to the brain that this is the "starting time" for the day, he says.
"Then they stay out late again Saturday night and sleep in Sunday morning. When Sunday night comes, the kids want to get into bed earlier, but they can't fall asleep. Then, when 6 a.m. comes, they can't wake up. Their biological clock has changed."
Some school districts have begun trying to address this problem. Exact data are hard to come by, but Amy Wolfson, PhD, a member of the NSF task force that put out the report, says she knows of 14 districts that have changed their start times to 8 a.m. or later, and another 20 that are contemplating the idea. Meanwhile, 11 school districts have voted against making such a change, says Wolfson, an associate professor of psychology at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass.
One school that has made such a schedule switch is the West Windsor-Plainsboro Middle School in Plainsboro, N.J. It came after Deborah Hornstra and Michele Brett, who both had children attending the school, mobilized a group of parents to demand a change in the 7:34 a.m. start time. "My kids were given a 6:45 a.m. bus pickup because we live quite far from the school, and they were on an earlier run," said Hornstra, who lives in Princeton Junction, N.J. "They had to be up at 6 and really run around to shower, dress, get organized and have anything resembling breakfast. They'd beg me for five or 10 minutes of extra sleep."
Getting the kids to bed earlier wasn't really an option, since they were already starting to get ready for bed at 9 p.m. and were usually asleep by 9:30 or 10, she says. "Teenagers seem to need a minimum of nine-and-a-quarter hours a night, but that would be asking them to fall asleep at 8:45, and I don't think that's going to happen, especially with the homework and all the other things they're expected to do," Hornstra says.
After intensive lobbying and a letter-writing campaign to local newspapers, Hornstra's group convinced the superintendent to push the starting time back by 15 minutes, to 7:49, starting this fall. Still, Hornstra says, "I'd like to see school start at 8:30 if I had my druthers."
At New Century High School in Lacey, Wash., students don't have to worry about setting the alarm to go off at 8 a.m. That's because their school, which bills itself as the only afternoon/evening high school in the state, runs from 2:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. "The kids walk in here and they're rarin' to go, although they do drag a little after dinner," says school principal Jim Slosson.
Slosson, who has worked at several schools with earlier starting times, says he used to have a trick for his most disruptive students: "I'd put them in the class they hate the most during first period, because they're still asleep then."
One school district that decided against changing its start time was Fairfax County, Va. "We have a very large school system with a busing system that's incredibly efficient," says district spokesman Paul Regnier. "It depends on the fact that every bus makes multiple runs. As soon as you start looking at substantially changing that schedule, you've got a problem."
The district considered flopping the elementary and high school starting times so that elementary school children, who are on an earlier biological clock anyway, would start earlier than the high school students. "But people don't want their kids standing in the dark waiting for buses," Regnier says. And changing the high school starting time would cut down on the time available for after-school activities, he adds.
Communities should use a multipronged approach to attack the problem of sleep deprivation, says Wolfson. First, schools should educate teenagers about proper sleeping habits. "I'm working on evaluating a program that teaches middle schoolers how they can change their own sleep and wake schedules," she says. "I don't know if we can get teens to go to bed at 10 p.m. and keep a regular schedule, but we can start by having [a] curriculum ... about sleep the same way we teach about exercising and good nutrition."
Starting school later in the day is a good step, but the overall culture -- including the student's home life -- has to change as well, Wolfson says.
"We live in a very fast-paced society where parents themselves skimp on sleep," she says. "So it's hard to expect one's own son or daughter to shut down the computer or turn the TV off or not call their friends if that's the family's lifestyle. And when we have expectations about the homework teenagers do and the activities they participate in, we need to take into account the fact that they need time to take care of their bodies."
© 2000 Healtheon/WebMD. All rights reserved.
| ||||
